


maybe i'm a crook for stealing your heart away

by krakeneggs



Category: American Horror Story, American Horror Story: Apocalypse
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-11
Updated: 2018-12-11
Packaged: 2019-09-16 00:48:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16943841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/krakeneggs/pseuds/krakeneggs
Summary: And those bright blue eyesCan only meet mine across the room filled with people that are less important than you.It's just the two of them, against the rest of the world.In which Michael comes to Mallory with an important proposal.





	maybe i'm a crook for stealing your heart away

**Author's Note:**

> No light, no light in your bright blue eyes  
> I never knew daylight could be so violent  
> A revelation in the light of day  
> You can't choose what stays and what fades away.

Sometimes, she thinks, if Michael wasn’t the antichrist, he could fool her as an angel. He has a beautiful voice, sultry and hypnotizing, with words rolling like silk off of his tongue. His soft blond locks give off a gentle halo effect, a stark contrast against the sharp edges of his jawline. It’s his clear blue eyes, so earnest and pure it’s like looking into the ocean. Sometimes, she’ll even catch him looking at her with a softness in his eyes that she’s never seen him look at anyone else with.

But she knows what he really is. He’s her worst fear, her darkest nightmare. The spawn of Satan, conceived from the unholy union between a ghost and human on a portal to hell, ready to bring about the apocalypse. How could he be expected to be anything else? All this death and destruction that he’s destined to bring about, destroying everything she’s ever known, her friends, her family, her life.

And yet.

And yet she still loves him, loves him with her whole heart. She loves the way he says her name, _Mallory_ , and how it feels like liquid fire, hot and burning in her chest. She loves the way his arm snakes its way around her waist when they’re sleeping together, and she wakes up with his head buried in the crook of her neck, as he snores softly. (Even if she has to begrudgingly wake him up before anyone in the house discovers them curled up in bed together.) She loves the feeling of his magic humming through her body, it’s intoxicating, and she thinks she understands the allure of his power, the feeling of being able to do anything and everything with no one to stand in her way. His magic feels different from hers; where hers is light and careful, his is heavy and searching, searching for the darkness she keeps buried deep inside of her, clawing at her secret desires. She gets it. She really does. It’s like standing at the edge of a precipice, a gentle breeze away from knocking her down, but she always pulls herself back.

He sees her in ways that nobody else does. One time, instead of her usual golden leaf headband, she wore a braid in its place.

“You changed your hair.”

“You noticed.” _You were the only one who did._

“I like it.” _I always notice you._

She’s sure that she was smiling even in her sleep that night.

She loves him even when he comes to her, hands trembling and covered in blood. She just brushes his hair back and holds him tight as his shoulders shake with silent sobs and he mumbles apologies that she only half-believes.

Neither of them will say it out loud, but they know that their time together is limited. Mallory is a witch. And Michael is, Michael Langdon, Antichrist. Undeniable facts that they can’t change, can’t change the fact that he’ll destroy her.

“Hey.”

Mallory looks up from her book about revolutions in the 17th century to find Michael standing in front of her. Weird, how she didn’t hear him materialize in her room.

“Hey.” She smiles, setting her book aside, page side down on the bed to save her spot. (God, Zoe would probably kill her for doing that to her book.)

“What are you doing in here?” She asks. It’s nearly midnight, and she was just about to go to sleep, hair already in two loose braids that run down her back.

“I missed you.” There’s something different about Michael, he seems almost nervous. Which is laughable, considering she’s never known him to be nervous about anything. (Except maybe her, but that doesn’t really count in her eyes.)

“Oh, and this couldn’t wait until morning?” She teases, extending a hand towards him and pulling him down to her bed. He lies down, and she curls up to him, legs intertwined with his. It’s an interesting contrast that the two of them make, her with dark brown hair and white nightgown, and him in his black suit and blond hair.

He stays silent, staring up at the ceiling, and his thoughts are so loud she can almost hear them. Almost. If she tried hard enough, she can focus and catch snippets of his thoughts, bit and pieces moving too fast for her to pick just one.

“Michael? What’s wrong?” She taps two fingers on his forehead.

“Run away with me.” He blurts out, still staring at the ceiling. He’s conflicted, that much she can feel.

“I’m serious, Mal. Run away with me.” He sits up suddenly, and so does she. There’s a wild, feral look in his eyes that she’s only ever seen once.

They were going to hang out and have a picnic in the forest, but he never showed up. Mallory went deep into the woods, deeper than she’d ever explored before to try and find him. And she did.

He was hunched over a wild bear that was almost twice the size of him. In its chest was a gaping hole where its heart should be. Instead, Michael had it in his hands, tearing into it with his teeth like a man starved, thick rivulets of blood dripping down his throat and smeared all over his hands and face. His eyes were pure black, darker than a night sky with no stars in it. It looked like Michael, but the light had completely faded from his normally blue eyes and it terrified her.

She stood there, frozen, icy fear gripping her chest until her legs finally started to work again. She cast a silencing spell to muffle her retreating footsteps, and ran, tears blurring her vision as she made her way back to the mansion. She sat for hours in the bathtub in a stupor, until the water grew cold and her skin pruned up. Coco found her, shivering and sniffling, dried tear tracks on her face, and simply wrapped her in a fluffy towel and put her to bed. She didn’t ask, Mallory didn’t tell.

She just simply chose to forget that it ever happened, to ignore the truth of what Michael was and what he did.

“Are you okay?” She holds the back of her hand to his forehead and he catches her wrist in an iron-tight grip.

“Mallory, I-“ He stops himself, everything he thought he prepared himself to say going out the window when he looks into her eyes, doe brown eyes filled with concern for him.

“Hey, it’s okay. It’s just me. I’m here for you.” Her other hand rests on his cheek, and she brushes her thumb over his cheekbone. “I love you.

“Run away with me.” He repeats. “No more witches, no more warlocks. We don’t have to get caught up in their politics, in their drama of who’s going to be more powerful. I’m tired, Mal. I’m tired of being a pawn in their game.”

“And just leave our lives behind? What about your Ms. Mead? I have a life here, Michael. I’ve made friends, and I finally found a place where I belong.” She says.

“But you belong with _me_ , Mallory.” He insists, tugging her closer to him. “We can finally be together, no more worrying about who’s gonna find out about us.”

He looks pleadingly at her, blue eyes meeting brown, and she’s so tempted to just give in. To say yes and run away with him, to a place where no one knows who they are. She can hold his hand in public, or kiss him whenever she wants to.

“And you’d even give up being the antichrist?” She asks.

He hesitates, and she catches a flicker of doubt in his features.

“You’d give up all your power, and your revered status as the antichrist, the alpha, just for me?” She asks again.

“I would have you by my side, at least. You could rule with me.” He says quietly, looking away from her.

She’s disappointed, but she knew it was coming. “You know I can’t. I can’t sacrifice the coven like that.”

“And you’d choose your precious coven over me?” Anger flashes in his eyes, and his grip on her wrist tightens enough for her to wince. “Come on. Think of what we could do together, the powers we possess, the destruction we could cause. You’re special, Mallory, I can feel it. You’re much more powerful than any of the witches here.”

She doesn’t say anything, just thinks about what he says. His eyes close, and she can tell the familiar hum of energy, his power flowing into her. She sighs softly as she feels the shift in her body, like adrenaline rushing through her veins. It’s so addicting, a never-ending high on her mind. She feels like she could tear the whole mansion to the ground with a flick of her wrist, send a hurricane ripping through New Orleans in the blink of an eye. Her power feeds off of his, enhancing her already strong abilities. She’s so close to saying yes, let herself tip over the edge into the abyss she’s been afraid to look into, when she gets a type of vision. A flash of fire, destruction raining down onto screaming men, women, and children. Gnarled bodies infected by radiation, wandering the vast wasteland, turning on each other. Her sisters are dead, bodies scattered across the mansion, broken and bloody. She sees an older version of herself, sitting at an older Michael’s side, smiling up at him. That’s her future, if she says yes to him in the moment.

Mallory rips herself out of his grasp, putting distance between the two of them as she gasps for breath, tears in her eyes. Her body aches from the sudden loss of power, like she’s been dunked in a bath of ice and she feels so cold and empty. She longs to reach for him but she can’t. She won’t.

“No.” She whispers.

His eyes open, and settle onto her trembling form. “What did you say?” His eyes darken.

“I said, no.” She says, a little firmer.

“Michael, I love you. But this isn’t the way. I’d be dooming the entire human race if I ran away. I’d be a coward if I did.” She says. She wants to cry at the pained look on his face, wants to take it all back and just lay in his arms like she used to. But she’s seen a version of the future she’d be condemning seven billion people to, and she doesn’t have the strength to ignore it.

“You’re either with me, or you’re against me, Mallory.” He growls.

“I’m sorry, Michael.” She thinks she can feel her heart breaking in her chest, and she looks away.

He’s breathing heavily, anger burning in his eyes. She can feel the pure rage radiating off of him, and she slowly backs away from him. In place of his blue eyes, are the coal black eyes she saw in the forest, devoid of any light, of any trace of the Michael she knows. This is a total stranger, and not the man who loves her, who presses soft kisses to the side of her neck, and makes her laugh so hard her stomach hurts. She has no idea who this person is. This is the first time she’s ever been truly afraid of him.

He pounces, and pins her down to the bed, hands going to her neck and squeezing, feeling the muscles of her neck flex and strain beneath his fingers. She tries to pry his fingers off, but his grip is unwavering. She tries to use magic to throw him off, but she’s still weakened from being imbued with so much of his power and then having it ripped away from her. Spots dot her vision, and through the haze she sees Michael, the same wild look in his eyes from the forest. Maybe he’ll end up tearing her heart out too. She feels her lungs burning for air, and she reaches up to stroke his cheek. Her last act to a man she loves, who hurt her in the one way she never thought he would.

“Michael?” He hears a voice as sweet as honey choke out his name, and it’s like the light in his darkness that he’s been looking for his whole life. The darkness, always so suffocating and clouding his every thought, taking control of his mind. He wants to reach out for that light, and maybe everything will be fine again. He’ll wake up and he’ll see his beautiful Mallory, smiling at him and she’ll forgive him for everything he’s done, like she always does. But he’s slipping and it’s so hard not to let his darkness snuff out the light and everything hurts and he’s so tired and if he can’t have her then no one can and he just. lets go.

Later, he’ll wake up to a sobbing Cordelia, clutching his Mallory’s cold, lifeless body in her arms, her body with bruises around her neck that _he_ made. She’ll scream and cry, asking why he did it and all he can do is stutter and stumble over his words because how do you explain that you had to do it? He’s sorry but that doesn’t matter to Cordelia, to Mallory.  She’ll try to bring her back but nothing works, not even being the Supreme. He’ll try to bring her back, and not even his father can help him.

Later, when the world’s destroyed and it’s just him left, alone on his throne built from chaos and suffering, he’ll still be haunted by the girl with the brown eyes and golden halo. He’ll be haunted by the bruises around her neck and the sad look in her eyes as she shakes her head at him, never saying anything. He’ll choke and cough up blue rose petals, and he’ll think to himself, was it all worth it?

 

**Author's Note:**

> hi i'm bad at dialogue i'm sorry, also i lowkey devastated myself while writing this rip
> 
> coolcephalopod.tumblr.com :))


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